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If Tennessee goes to the Democrats it’s hard to see that Republicans are knocking off any Democratic Senate incumbents.

I’m recent off year waves the contested seats all tended to break the same way. To the Democrats in 2006 and GOP in 2010 and 2014.

If this does indeed became a wave year I think the same thing will happen. All of the Democratic incumbents will be reelected and a couple of GOP held seats that are seriously contested will fall into Democratic hands.

In 2002, the Democrats lost very-vulnerable Senators in Georgia, Missouri and Minnesota, but picked up Tim Hutchinson’s GOP seat in Arkansas. As in 2018, this was the first Senate election of a Republican Presidency, although the circumstances today are rather different from 9/11 and the lead-up to the Iraq war.

Numerically, a 3-1 swap was more of a wash than a wave, but it restored a very narrow edge to the Senate Republican caucus.

However, in 2004, as Pres. Bush won an absolute popular majority over Sen. Kerry, the Republicans picked up all of a fringe of Democratic Senate seats around the South Atlantic and Gulf, from Louisiana to North Carolina, all but one opened by retirement: those of John Breaux (La), Bob Graham (Fla), Zell Miller (defeated for re-election in Georgia), Ernest Hollings (S.C,) and John Edwards (N.C.)

Elsewhere, John Thune (R) in South Dakota defeated Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D), who had not benefitted from championing the Authorization of the Use Force in Iraq.

And the retiring Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado (R, fomerly D) and Peter Fitzgerald (R-Illinois) were replaced by Democrats.

So it wasn’t a complete wave (6 Republican gains and 2 Democratic), but it was closer to one.

I won’t give links because they will throw this into moderation, but visit Wikipedia and look up the articles for “United States Senate election, 2002” and “United States Senate election, 2004”.

Polls this far out( seven months),often indicate nothing more than name recognition.Bredesen ,for example, was Governor and elected statewide.Blackburn is a Congresswoman elected from a district.And yes that 20% of Republicans in this Now very Republican State would support a Democrat for Senate against a fairly mainstream conservative “is a lot.”

My own view?Bredesen, at best ,has a thirty to forty percent chance.

Indeed, if he wins ,that would indicate a Democratic sweep because there is simply no reason to believe that a regular Republican like Blackburn ,would lose in this very red state,nor is there any issue that I’m aware of that would be causing such a result as this poll indicates.

Another counter to this early polling story to ponder….(with a little hope added on the end)

via twitter….

Kyle Kondik
‏@kkondik

Still inclined to think TN-SEN is effectively a 2.0 version of 2014 KY-SEN — a race that seemed close the whole way but where McConnell was clearly favored the whole time, and rightly so. That said, this is an open seat and likely a D-leaning year as opposed to an R-leaning one